


In the Midst of Life

by MrProphet



Series: Doctor Susan [1]
Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-22
Updated: 2017-04-22
Packaged: 2018-10-22 12:44:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10697280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrProphet/pseuds/MrProphet





	In the Midst of Life

The year is 217AD, that’s ‘After the Daleks’, although Grandmother always laughs that it used to mean something different. ‘The Year of Our Lord’, although she’s not exactly clear on whose Lord that is, only that it isn’t hers. She gets quite scratchy about that, but then I guess you get scratchy in general when you’re three centuries old and all your friends are dead. She feels out of place and I know she harbours a desire to leave the Earth behind her. If it were not for her much-vaunted but never specified oaths I think she would have the space programme up and running and building warp engines already.

“It’s lucky for them that I’m a good little Time Lady,” she says, about seven or eight times a week now.

Good or bad, I know that her patience ran out a long time ago. She’s been awfully busy in that garden shed of hers, but she hasn’t done any gardening for over a year, nor can I believe that she sent me into Wreck City to fetch Dalek power coils so she can build a better lawnmower. She’s up to something.

*

“Mercury fluid links?” I asked.

“Yes, yes,” Grandmother said. “Well; not the actual fluid links, just the mercury. I made the links myself on the lathe.”

I frowned. “The lathe? You have a lathe? Where did you get a lathe from?”

“Ah, Ian,” she sighed. “You are not my only grandchild.”

Actually, I’m not even that. She’s my thrice great grandmother, and we’re only that close because of our slow lives. Most of us don’t have children until we’re forty and we don’t look old until we’ve got about a century under our belts. Great, great, great grandfather was just a man and checked out at ninety-three, but Grandmother – her children are all gone and all the remaining generations call her Grandmother now – has been a constant presence in our lives.

“I’ll get the mercury,” I promised. “It’s still a pretty exotic commodity, but I’m sure I know a guy who knows a guy.”

“I knew I could count on you, Ian.”

I smiled. “But I want to see what you’re building,” I told her.

“Now, don’t be ridiculous, child. You can’t make ultimatums with your grandmother, it’s indecent.”

“No, Grandmother. You brought me up to be curious and I am. I want to see what you’re making in the shed. Otherwise, no mercury.”

“I have…”

“Other grandchildren,” I agreed, “but they don’t know a guy who knows a guy. Or they do, but not the right combination of guys to get the quantity of mercury that you want.”

She eyed me imperiously for a long moment, before conceding. “Very well,” she agreed. “Yes, yes; perhaps I should share this with someone. Very well; bring the mercury to the shed when you have it.”

*

I got the mercury easily enough. As I told Grandmother, I know a guy who… Well, actually I know a lot of guys who know a lot of other guys, and a lot of girls enter the equation at various places.

I got the mercury in the end from Barbara, a girl I know fairly well and have some ambitions to know better. She’s one of two Barbaras that I know, just like I’m one of three Ians in her circle. They’re both popular names; almost as popular as Susan.

Barbara’s younger sister is called Susan, and is almost as shrewd a saleswoman as Barbara herself. While I was buying the mercury she managed to sell me a lump of coral, which she suggested I could carve into a present for Barbara. I wasn’t really convinced, but I like Susan and she wasn’t asking much for it. Besides, there was something about it that I liked; it felt… right.

*

I took the mercury – and, incidentally, the coral – back to Grandmother’s shed and knocked on the door. She opened the door and peeked out. “Yes?” she asked.

“Can I come in?”

She looked me up and down. “Are you going to give me the mercury before you come in, eh? I don’t think so. So you’d better come in.”

“Thanks,” I said.

Grandmother opened the door and I went in.

“Good grief,” I gasped. “This place is smaller on the inside than it is on the outside.”

“Hmm? Yes; that’s the insulation,” she assured me.

In addition to about six centimetres of insulation – foam, foil and some synthetic fibre which I suspected she had probably extruded and woven herself from one of the machines in her workshop in the house – the walls were lined with wire mesh, etched circuit boards and rows and rows of old hubcaps. Most of the centre of the shed was taken up by a fire pole stuck through a hexagonal wooden table and surrounded by a mass of plastic tubing; again, everything was lined with layers of metal mesh. A series of consoles and control panels had been fixed to the table and a Dalek televiewer had been bolted high in one corner. 

She had installed a metal floor which rang hollow, as though she had dug out underneath the shed, probably to make room for more cables. Something beneath the floor hummed, as though it were generating power. There was also the lathe and a workbench and a tool shelf, and a big, comfortable chair with squishy cushions.

“What is all this?” I asked.

“The mercury,” Grandmother demanded. I handed it over and she ducked under the table. “Got to make sure that the fluid links are working and then…” There was a soft gurgling and a click and a snap. “Ian, would you give the helmic regulator a twist when I give the word?”

“The what?”

“The little round handle with the rubber grip.”

I walked over to the table and toyed with the controls; none of them seemed to do much. When Grandmother called up, I gave the required control the requested twist. It resisted, but the columns of plastic tubing rose a short distance once I got the handle moving.

“Excellent! Yes, yes; excellent,” Grandmother said, struggling to her feet. “It’s a shame that it won’t work,” she sighed.

“It won’t?” I couldn’t claim to be surprised by that; the whole thing looked like a bit of a shambles to me. It was a bit of a disappointment after the months of speculation.

She shook her head. “It’s got everything it needs – which wasn’t easy, even with your access to the ruins of the Dalek base – except a telepathic circuit base. I’ve built a time rotor from scratch, adapted a vortex manipulator from a prototype DRADIS, constructed a block transfer processor and programmed the BIOS from memory, but without a psychic component to integrate my Artron energy imprint, it will never be more than a crude facsimile of a TT capsule. If only…”

She was interrupted by a thumping on the door of the shed.

“Ian! Ian Campbell, come out of there!”

“A friend of yours?” Grandmother asked crossly. “Hmm? You thought the invitation you extorted to see inside my shed could be extended to some floozy?”

“It’s just Barbara,” I sighed. “And she’s not a floozy.”

Actually, I was wrong. Not about the floozy thing, but it wasn’t  _just_  Barbara. When I opened the door and she pushed in, she was dragging Susan with her.

“Excuse me!” Grandmother exclaimed. “You can’t just push your way into my shed!” She was very nearly right; there was barely enough room for the four of us.

“I’m sorry,” Barbara said, “but my sister has sold Ian a rather valuable item for a pittance. I was rather hoping to get it back.”

I fished in my pocket for the coral. “What, this?” I asked. “It’s just coral.”

“I hope not,” Barbara assured me. “I paid a fortune for it.”

“From a rather dashing man in the most extraordinary outfit,” Susan added. “A sort of uniform and a long coat that… flowed.

“Flowed?” I was dubious.

“Yes. Like I said; dashing.”

Barbara blushed. “He was not… Anyway,  _he_  said it came from one of the Dalek ships down in London, but…”

Suddenly, Grandmother gasped in amazement. “It can’t be,” she whispered.

“What is it?” I asked.

Barbara reached out for the coral, but Grandmother snatched it from my grasp.

“It’s a TARDIS core,” she said, gazing raptly at the tiny coral shard. She dropped to her knees and began rummaging beneath the table. “If the birthing matrix is intact, then this could be just what I need.”

“Hey!” Barbara protested. “That’s mine.”

“Rubbish!” Grandmother snapped. “My grandson bought it.”

“For next to nothing, from my idiot sister,” Barbara argued.

“Hey!” Susan protested.

Grandmother struggled out again. She was beginning to look rather flushed. Oddly, the effect was starting to spread into the bizarre apparatus on the table, which was glowing softly, although not with anything so mundane as light.

“You can feel it, can’t you?” she asked me. “That glow; the vibration? That’s  _Time_ ,” she breathed. “That’s the taste of adventure; of infinite horizons stretching out before you.”

“It’s still  _my_  blasted coral,” Barbara insisted.

“Ian will pay you whatever you think fair,” Grandmother assured her. “Take what you need from my funds,” she added, addressing me. “I won’t need them.”

“What?” I didn’t like the sound of that. “Grandmother…?”

She ignored me and sat down in her favourite chair; I’d wondered for some time where that had gone. “It’s time for me to go, Ian,” she explained happily.

“But…”

“Ian?” Barbara asked.

“What’s going on?” Susan demanded.

I looked to Grandmother to explain, but she had lain back in her chair and closed her eyes. Before my eyes she somehow slumped, and I knew that, with her… with whatever-this-bizarre-contraption-was complete, she had quite literally given up the ghost.

“Oh, Ian,” Barbara sighed. She came over and touched my arm. “I’m so sorry.”

“It… She was very old,” I said. “She had a good run and she’s at peace now. She’s…”

“Glowing,” Susan said.

“She’s glowing,” I finished. “She’s glowing?”

She was glowing.

Golden light spilled from her body and flooded the interior of the shed, flashing off the wires and the fire pole and the hubcaps. The plastic tubing began to rise and fall, emitting a soft light of its own and giving out a terrible groaning, wheezing sound.

“What’s happening?” Susan cried.

“I don’t know!” I replied.

The light grew and intensified, spilling over every surface until we had to cover our eyes to keep from being dazzled. Then it faded, and the shed was… different. The hubcaps had fused with the walls, and the walls themselves were… receding. It was as though the shed were getting larger –  _much_  larger; larger even than the wooden walls which I knew to contain it – and the disparate elements from which it was constructed combining into a unified whole. The table had fused itself to the floor and a strange, metallic patina covered all of the walls. 

Everything about the place now had that not-quite-glow of not-exactly-light.

And Grandmother…

“Grandmother?” I asked.

The woman rose from Grandmother’s chair. She was wearing Grandmother’s clothes, but she looked at least ten years younger, twenty pounds lighter, and her silver hair was much longer. She went at once to a mirror on the wall – which was now about ten feet from the central table – and examined herself.

“Hmm. Not as much of an improvement as I hoped. The TARDIS core must have needed an awful lot of my strength. Still;  _she’s_  turned out alright. Very well indeed, considering.”

“Grandmother?” I asked again.

“Ah; Ian,” she said softly. She walked over to the table and worked some of the controls. “And your friends. Hmm; this is difficult.”

“What is?” Barbara asked.

“Well, I knew that my regeneration would kickstart the growth of the TARDIS core, birth the basic internal dimensions, forge a psychic link between us and give her the power to integrate and activate all of those systems I rather brilliantly fashioned out of whatever scrap was available on this wilderness world.” She walked around the table. “Unfortunately, I didn’t reckon on Ian leaving the helmic regulator fully open and the dematerialisation control closed; we’re now in flight.”

“In flight?” Barbara asked.

“To where?” Susan added.

“To everywhere and every when!” Grandmother – the new and, seemingly, improved Grandmother – announced. “Unfortunately, again, I can’t really make any promises about getting you home.” She fiddled with the controls. “You see, this TARDIS doesn’t have any data banks, and I can’t locate the Eye of Harmony or any part of the Web of Time; it’s as though Gallifrey doesn’t exist anymore,” she noted. “All of which will make navigation something of a lucky dip until she has time to see a bit of the universe, and less than that if I can’t track down a power source.”

“Mrs Campbell…” Barbara began.

Grandmother waved that away. “Never saw myself as a Mrs and Campbell was my husband’s name,” she said. “I suppose Susan would be a little informal, and confusing,” she added, with a wink at her namesake. “On the other hand… Well, I have got the qualifications.”

“Qualifications?” Barbara asked. “Mrs… Susan… Um…”

Grandmother smiled. “You can call me the Doctor.”


End file.
